How Rihanna Helped Jessie Buckley & Paul Mescal Stay Positive After Intense Days on ‘Hamnet’ Set

Rihanna‘s “We Found Love” kept the cast of Hamnet from going to a hopeless place mentally after emotionally heavy days on set, according to leading lady Jessie Buckley.

During a chat on The Late Show on Wednesday (Dec. 3), the Irish actress shared that she and costar Paul Mescal would take part in weekly dance breaks set up by director Chloe Zhao, who wanted the performers to be able to let loose after spending so much time emulating grief and hardship on camera. “We’d have gone through a lot as a family in these weeks, lived a lot, loved a lot, lost a lot,” recalled Buckley, who plays Agnes Hathaway in the film, the fictionalized version of William Shakespeare’s wife.

“But at the end of the week, [Zhao] would spend an hour setting up the camera to do a dance take, where she basically would blast Rihanna, ‘We Found Love’ at the top of the sound system,” Buckley continued. “Whether it was just the family or 300 extras dressed up in period costume, we’d all create our own mosh pit to Rihanna.”

Released in late November, Hamnet is based on a novel of the same name that dramatizes the real-life story of Shakespeare — who is portrayed by Mescal in the film — and his wife, Anne Hathaway. The couple shared two children, but their son, Hamnet, died at the age of 11. Shakespeare would later pen his infamous Hamlet play.

Needless to say, the script called for a lot of intense days on set. But while there is footage of the cast dancing off that heaviness, Buckley says they can’t release it because it would cost too much to obtain the rights to “We Found Love,” which features Calvin Harris and spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the early 2010s.

“It’s so embarrassing, because I’ve actually talked about this quite a lot now,” Buckley told Colbert, laughing. “Rihanna must be like, ‘Can you please just stop asking me?’ But it’s really expensive to get that song. So we can’t show it.”

“Rihanna, come on,” the late-night host then implored into the camera. “Do a solid here.”

Watch Buckley’s full conversation with Colbert above.